Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp
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Płaszów (pronounced [ˈpwaʃuf]) was a Nazi German concentration camp near Kraków. It is also featured in the movie Schindler's List about the life of Oskar Schindler.
The camp in the village of Płaszów was founded in December 1941 in the southern suburbs of Kraków, originally Poland, but at that time within the German occupied General Government. Commanding the camp was Amon Göth, an SS commandant from Vienna who was known for being uncommonly sadistic in his treatment of the prisoners. On 13 March 1943, Göth personally oversaw the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto, forcing inhabitants deemed capable of work into Płaszów. Those deemed unfit for work were killed. Under him were his staff of SS men and a few SS women, including Gertrud Heise, Luise Danz, Alice Orlowski and Anna Gerwing.
After the war Płaszów prisoners recalled Alice Orlowski as the "picture book SS-woman, 1.5 m tall, blond, beautiful". They also told about her whippings, especially to young women across their eyes.[citation needed] Apparently, at roll call she would walk through the lines of women, and, when suspecting someone of talking, would personally whip them.[citation needed] A former prisoner[who?] commented after the war that she was put on a train in Płaszow and an SS woman hit her over the head. "You would think because they're women that they would be nice, but most of them were big and fat and ugly", one former prisoner testified.
The camp was known as a slave labor camp, supplying manpower to several armaments factories and a stone quarry. The death rate in the camp was very high. Many prisoners, including many children and women died of typhus, starvation and executions. Płaszów camp became particularly infamous for both individual and mass shootings carried out there. All documents pertaining to the mass killings and shootings were entrusted by commandant Göth to head SS woman, Kommandoführerin Alice Orlowski. She held these documents in her possession until the end of the war, then destroyed them.[citation needed]
In January 1945, the last of the remaining inmates and camp staff left the camp on a death march to Auschwitz, including several female SS. Many of those who survived the march were killed upon arrival. When the Nazis knew that the Russians were coming towards Kraków, they completely dismantled the camp, leaving an empty field. The bodies that were buried here in mass graves were exhumed and burned on site. The Red Army liberated the then empty camp on 20 January 1945.
The area which held the camp now consists of sparsely wooded hills and fields with one large memorial marking where the camp once stood, with an additional small plaque located near the opposite end of the site.
